Proto Punk by Brendan Wells

(Pest House Publishing, 2013) A genuinely heartbreaking minicomic that takes every high school loser angst misery and tattoos a swastika on it. This really made me sad.

Zolar X "Life Signs From the Stars"

(Deliar Spacer Corporation, 2012) Sequencing is a thing! I'll get to that in a minute (or eon, or parsec), but first...Roctober readers know the story of this interstellar band that was brought back down to earth a few times by ugly reality (involving some serious prison time), and reality TV (involving an American Idol spinoff mocking them mercilessly). But anyone who genuinely remembers them from the scene back in the day(70s Hollywood/Sunset/Rodney's days, that is) does not talk about their glitter music or even their  performances, but rather they talk about their dedication. They wore their glam alien gear whenever they went out, they spoke an alien tongue, they were ALL IN! Decades later the Zolar leader (whom I would ask to be taken to, were I to land on their planet) is Ygarr, and he is a different kind of all in. For many parsecs he has been recording performing and figuring out how to move forward with a band that at best has cult interest (rather than a cult following), and with a rotating cast of space characters, without the prominence of some of the defining voices from the earlier days. So back to sequencing: When I listened to these songs (pretty much all of them space phasing space songs about space with space sounds) for the first time they did not strike me as out of this world. I saw the charms but saw more chinks in the space armor. Then...the CD ended with one of the most powerful band manifestos/theme songs I have ever heard. "Imagination" is an ultra earnest ode to artists and dreamers and the immeasurable value of embracing make believe. And it rhymed "George Lucas' Star Wars" with "Spock's logical metaphors." More importantly, it made re-listening to this album far more sublime than cheesy. Rather than appreciating this as space glam twice removed the album feels more like a celebration of the gentle beauty of imagination in a Mister Rogers sense rather than akin to Mr. Spock. So...maybe that track could have come a little earlier. Or maybe I need to learn to parcel my parsecs.

Jobriath "As the River Flows"

 

(Eschatone, 2014) This is an inspiring, incredible record. In the early 70s Jobriath was built up to the stratosphere by management and presented as the glamster who could out-Bowie Bowie, because he was legitimately all out gay, not a gay-ish poseur. Surprisingly, the giant butt-centric billboards were not what the 70s were looking for, and as Roctober readers have read in excruciating detail, the artist formally known as Bruce Wayne Campbell (and eventually known as cabaret crooner Cole Berlin), lived a poetically tragic life, leading too a sadly predicable AIDS-related exit. But what his two albums did not make perfectly clear, because the grand production shaded his contributions, was that not only was he really queer (and really handsome and really bold and really game for anything) but he was really talented. This album collects two spare studio sessions with Jo at the piano cutting his compositions live, and because the polish is not there I have read (rave) write ups of this album saying that it proves that his talents were outside of the glam-osphere. I cannot agree less. The kind of Broadway rock (at which  Meatloaf was most successful, but so many others practiced) feels so big and flashy and majestic that it projects glitter and lights and sparkly an spacesuits even in its sparest moments. And the delightful/dire debauchery of these songs of drugs and freaks and rockers is the stuff glammy space trash mountains are built upon. And Elton just dressed like a glittering Donald Duck -- Jobriath actuaslly sings a verse in Donald's ducky voice! Most notably, the spare but soaring piano prototype of Jobriath's best known (and all out best) major label track, "I'maman" is richer than King Midas. And just a shiny.

Rock 'N' Rainbow "Let's Boogie"

 (rocknrainbow.com, 2014) This is a children's group where everyone is a color and (sorta) a rock n roll genre. There's a Blue Elvis, a disco diva named Lady Red, and a yellow Elton John looking dude. And best of all, they feature a glamrock alien named Purple Stardust. All that said, not a lot of alien glam here. They pull off the kids rock trick of sounding like they are rocking without much volume or power, but their biggest hit BY FAR (12 million Youtube hits, vs. less than 300 for Blue Elvis' not-at-all-Also Sprach Zarathustra-esque theme song) is about wrinkly elephants and is a pretty standard Rock-n-Roll-free Romper Room-ish singalong. And though I LOVE Purple Stardust's makeup and violet Chucks, is he really more glam than Romper Room's funky Bee?

Sammy Davis Jr "In Person Australia '77"

 

(RCA, 1977) This is an epic, long-as-hell-for-a-single-LP concert recording in Sydney Opera House, and only released in Australia. While there is not, despite the title,  a lot of Oz references here (not even doing a bit with an accent like he would do in London, and it was too early for a "Dingo ate my baby " bit) there is a fair amount of the other part of the title, "'77" going on here, as he covers Manilow, does his seventies hits ( "Candy Man," and more importantly, the Barretta theme complete with squawking bird impressions) and during his classic "Rock-A-Bye Your Baby (with a Dixie Melody)" impression montage he adds Brando's Godfather to his usual "you dirty rat"-era repertoire. Yet this still has plenty of his early 50s Decca-era material intact, and possibly was not an international release because so many of these numbers were on past live albums. He even goes back to his 20s child star days and does some tap dancing (on a live record, always a Sammy treat). There's a very long tribute to Sinatra, which is not as much of a genuflection as you might think, because he uses it to tell a lot of his own story (though singing about his daughter, Nancy, seems weird). I suppose in the 70s Sammy was not as powerful as earlier in his career, but as a showman, as a performer balancing cool delivery and desperate desire to please, and as a pure delivery system for Great American Songbook gems (especially "The Lady Is A Tramp" and "I've Got You Under My Skin") this dandy man could!

Off The Charts: The Song-Poem Story: OST

(Burger/Magic Key/Complex) Amid all the badness and misery and terrible decisions and extra burden of 2020, one of my best moves (terribleness related) was ordering this LP before the Burger Records empire imploded. Close to twenty years after the documentary that told the story of the Song-Poem industry, this perfectly curated soundtrack emerges. Song-Poems were an industry/scam/blessing that involved advertising that artists/dreamers/rubes that they can "set their poems to music," and get fame and fortune. The marks send in lyrics and money and the company has a studio band knock out quickee songs while a singer croons words that he may be reading for the first time, and then the writer gets a compilation LP featuring a bunch of other similar strivers on it. Usually these albums are very hard to listen to, but occasionally the band and especially the singer (Rod Rogers most notably) elevate the weirdness to create songs like nothing you've heard. The earnestness of the writer's expressions (of religious devotion, loyalty to the President, the joys of every day life) are not akin to, and are often more moving than, the polished lyrics of pro songwriters. And when the amateur writers tried to replicate professional songwriting and create a rock, pop, country, or psychedleic hit, it gets even more fascinating. The writer is key, but the disconnected, but professional, music production is what makes these work (or not:one of my friends was susceptible to these siren calls in this back in the 70s and 80s and sent his soul dance song off -- he was a local Soul Train dancer -- and they made it into a country song...about urban boogie-ing). The amazing compilations that came out in the last Century on Carnage Press, Bar/None records, and Tzadik, with the help of Tom (from NRBQ), Dan Clowes, Ellery Eskelin, and the great Phil X. Milstein (song poem archivist extraordinaire) are STELLAR, but this comp has the advantage of stepping outside of orthodoxy and includes the famed song-poem prank song, "A Blind Man's Penis" (John Trubee's attempt to see if they would record anything, which they almost would, though they changed it from "Steve Wonder's Penis") and the eccentric Gary Forney, who represents the dreamers of S-P land, but is more of a weirdo outsider musician than a true song-poemer. But it also has the all time hits, including the undeniable pop ditty "Little Rug Bug," the jarring "Jimmy Carter Says Yes," and the confounding"I'm A Ginseng Digger." I'm a song-poem digger! Not sure how you can get this now because of...stuff. But try.

Video Beast "Gooch"

(videobeastband.com, 2015) I listened to this all the way through, but I didn't love it, and I don't remember it, BUT I am willing to believe the dude in the leather gimp mask on the cover is the lead singer, and even if that isn't true I am pretending it is, which makes me like the band. Would I like the band better if they were named Gooch, and "Video Beast" was their album title? Duh.

Quintron & Miss Pussycat "Goblin Alert!"

 

(Goner, 2020) God damn this record is good. Having had the privilege to watch Quintron in weird gestational Chicago underground form, I have long been on Team Q, but c'mon...he partnered with a beautiful puppet-obsessed seamstress/fashion superhero, played one of a kind instruments that look like a mash up of Jack Kirby's tech and Fat Albert's junkyard gear, and he sung about space and rats and ghosts and witches and parties (and now goblins!), so obviously this would be my favorite band in the world no matter what. Adding a live drummer who is delivering the real shit in a way that Q & P can groove off of is the secret ingredient here, but rocking with righteous indignation because they are sick of babies and Jesus and teenagers getting away with their shit fuels this even further than a good stick man (Sam Yoger, by the way). Adding some actual guitar propels this to a new level of rocking and rolling, but Quintron and Miss Pussycat were already performing at absolute peak rock and roll, so this record is kind of impossible. This is an impossible record.

real numbers "what was & what is"

(Almost Ready, 2013) I assumed this band would sound exactly like the eal Kids covering Kraftwerk's "Numbers." And I was totally right!

The Jackets "Queen of the Pill," "Shadows of Sound"

 (Voodoo Rhythm, 2019, 2015) These garage fuzz punk groovester glam-adjacent psyche-kitty corner rockers may be Swiss, but they ain't no cheese, and the only holes they have in them are the holes frontwoman Jackie blows into my heart when she sings with her eerie power.